SOURCE: "Reader's Guide to Paradiso," in Review, No. 29, May-August, 1981, pp. 47-54.

In the following essay, Fazzolari discusses the sequential development of Paradiso's storyline, focusing on Lezama Lima's use of a "poetic system" that utilizes metaphorical images and language, and symbolic characters and events.

The Beginnings

José Lezama Lima, the outstanding writer to appear in Cuba in this century, began his career as a founder of literary magazines. Verbum, Espuela de Plata (Silver Spur), Nadie Parecía (No One Appeared), and Orígenes (Origins) form a chain of magazines that rescued Cuba from aesthetic mediocrity and attracted the best Cuban talent of the period—in literature, art, and music—while at the same time introducing the public to the most significant innovations occurring in the arts and letters of the rest of the continent and Europe. Orígenes, which enjoyed the greatest prestige and the longest life, gave...